Tom: you are correct that this is not a general solution for enterprise needs.

My focus has been on knowledge networks where content typically is curated (to some degree) and has a well-defined scope for practitioners who need to quickly find answers or share solutions to solve problems. The expert's mental model/map also helps accelerate competency of younger employees who become better able to understand relationships between concepts in their domain. Some studies have shown that these KM techniques can reduce the time to competency by 50%.

Text analytics can also be important. In some of my past work, the concept map helped to discover relevant information. I'll admit that today's technology is much more effective at discovery and tagging. I see opportunity for synergies.

Gavin: The mental model map is not a search-based tool, it is FIND-based. When adding content, practitioners spend seconds tagging a new item with a few relevant metadata terms. This automatically and immediately links the new knowledge to the map. One Click on the map’s metadata object returns relevant information or experts who can be contacted in seconds.

--Jeff